The traditional local building materials of the Roman Republic, travertine, tufa and limestone were also employed for portraits in Rome and
in Italic cities during the Republican period. They seem, however, to have gone out of fashion for portraiture by the end of the Republic when
they were replaced by either marble or by the more dense limestone.
Limestone of varying quality was quarried throughout the Mediterranean
often on or very close to the habitation or cult site itself and it was used
extensively for portraiture, particularly in rural sanctuaries and tombs.
Unlike marble and bronze, limestone is not mentioned in inscriptions
as a material for honorific statues set up by the public. The silence in
the inscriptional evidence, however, may be because it was so prevalent
that it was considered ‘not worth mentioning’. However, there is evidence
that limestone was even used for representing the emperor in areas with
no marble resources. As different limestones have their own specific
character, local sculptors developed special skills and styles in carving
the stone, or they continued working in a tradition developed generations
before.

A relief portrait from Syrian Palmyra, for example, cut inthe good local limestone, may easily be recognized as deriving fromPalmyra even when out of context because of its special carving techniquesand styles. Many Palmyran portraits have wonderfully preserved colouring applied directly on the limestone, whereas in other parts of Syria and Egypt, the limestone portraits were first plastered and then painted.

When no usable limestone was available sculpting skills
had to be applied to other stones. During the Hellenistic and Roman
periods a very specialized practice developed in the Hauran in the Roman
province of Arabia. Here local sculptors (and architectural stone cutters)
became extraordinarily good at cutting a coarse black volcanic basalt. Three seated late-second to early-third century A.D. male portraits statues in half life-size from El-Kefar (Aikafar), are cut in this black volcanic porous basalt. Two of the statues have the heads preserved and although they are very simply cut there remains little doubt that they are portrait statues, as one of the heads recalls portraits of Marcus Aurelius. All three statues hold open book scrolls in their laps and recall Egyptian statuary of scribes. Two of the scrolls have Greek inscriptions, one of which tells that “Rufus son of Asopus presented the statue”. The last inscription reads “Tymos son of -aeros made it out of their own money” and although this statue is headless it is the most
interesting of all because of the decoration of the chair. A human head
and a lion carved on either side of the chair on the rail below the seat
may be a reference to the sella curulis, the chair of a Roman magistrate.
The function of these statues is unknown but they show an intriguing
mixture of local and foreign influences. The statuary type recalls Egyptian
traditional statuary but its details reflect the Roman sella curulis.
The skills employed in cutting this stone were certainly developed out
of ‘need’. This was the stone available locally. However, beyond their
apparent iconographic crudeness, the statues may not just have transmitted
connotations of the identity of the patron but also stressed a
long and proud local tradition of craftsmen coping with this extraordinary
material.

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